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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24586573">Tristitas</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/klytae/pseuds/klytaemnestra'>klytaemnestra (klytae)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 09:15:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,854</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24586573</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/klytae/pseuds/klytaemnestra</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>If he must die, he'd rather not stave off the inevitable.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elena/Tseng (Compilation of FFVII), Rufus Shinra/Tseng</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>52</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Tristitas</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>From my backlog of multiple unfinished Tseng/Rufus fics.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s Reno who slips up. 'What's up with you and Tseng?'</p><p> </p><p>The look Rufus shoots him is deadly. He’s seen it before from across the board room, or behind the leveled aim of a shotgun. ' I didn't realize there was anything up.'</p><p> </p><p>Reno's already backpedaling, for a man never short of things to say, Reno finds himself stricken mute. Of all that he's seen &amp; done, this is the one thing he absolutely does not want to get into. Drop the plate on the slums, sure, all in a day's work, but getting involved in Shinra's worst kept secret is way above his pay grade.</p><p> </p><p>Though it's since moved past the whole your boss is fucking his boss's only legitimate son it's still something Reno wants to steer far, far away from.</p><p> </p><p>'Is there something I should know?'</p><p> </p><p>It’s the first seed of doubt.</p><p> </p><p>He sees them silhouetted against the fire, sitting entirely too close to be called professional. Elena laughs softly at something Tseng has said, their voices hushed against the ambient roar of the flames. They’re drunk, he thinks. Or Elena is at least judging from the way her head lists ever so slightly against Tseng’s shoulder. </p><p> </p><p>A decidedly loud spark pops, the wood still slightly damp from the evening’s snow, and Elena makes a startled sound that quickly fades into another laugh as Tseng’s lips find her jaw.</p><p> </p><p>Hidden within the shadows of the hall, Rufus turns away. There’s a lingering guilt there, knowing that these unguarded moments were never intended to be witnessed by another. He tells himself he wasn’t spying, and then wonders why it is he who should feel guilty.</p><p> </p><p>He quietly closes the bathroom door behind him, lock firmly in place.</p><p> </p><p>Simply too much for his already worn nerves, Rufus strangles shaky sobs beneath his palm. It doesn’t matter, he tells himself, it never mattered. And soon enough he’ll have little reason to care, but he doubts and questions and fears so many things now that he is waltzing with Death.</p><p> </p><p>He starts at the sound of his name, and furiously wipes away tears unwilling to allow Tseng to see him like this. ‘A minute.’ he calls through the bathroom door, as he searches the drawer for the painkillers he knows Tseng keeps stashed there, shaking two into his hand, which he downs with a glass of water from the tap.</p><p> </p><p>When he opens the door bare moments later, his icy facade is back in place, expression one of vague disgust and annoyance, as if his eyes aren’t glassy and bloodshot from having an unprecedented breakdown.</p><p> </p><p>Tseng studies him with concerned eyes but says nothing as Rufus grips the water glass a bit tighter, and considers for a moment how to breach the topic at hand.</p><p> </p><p>‘It’s all rather convenient for you,’ Rufus begins, stares accusatory as he speaks words he doesn’t mean, words he doesn’t even believe. ‘I suppose it saves you the trouble of ending it. I always knew the fascination would end.’ He had been young and beautiful and powerful once. And now …<br/>
<br/>
He shakes his head at his own vanity, his own carefully controlled world of lies. </p><p> </p><p>'Elena.'</p><p> </p><p>‘I wished to believe you would wait.’ He pauses, struggles to find the words to say, standing here vulnerable beneath Tseng’s gaze, here without the security of his bandages under the glaring vanity lights, Rufus knows the scars are visible. ‘I’m not dead yet.’ The words are like poison, but Rufus has never wished to acknowledge his weakness, that he is, afterall, human.</p><p> </p><p>Tseng stares at his lover, ‘You always were one for theatrics.’ Neither an admission or a denial of guilt.</p><p> </p><p>‘Do not patronize me. I saw you with her!’</p><p> </p><p>Tseng makes a sound as if this entire ordeal is tiresome, ‘It’s nothing.’</p><p> </p><p>‘Don’t tell me I’m imagining things.’</p><p> </p><p>‘You were not.’</p><p> </p><p>He flinches when Tseng tries to touch him and turns away, focuses on the tile floor as the anger flares within him and dies. After all, isn’t this what he’s wanted? To push the Turk away, to force him to learn to live his life without him, for it’s only a matter of months, weeks. Lowered eyes drift to the purple bruise-like wounds marring his otherwise pale hand, watches the way it creeps along his wrist, and he accepts that he is dying. Still a longing ache forms within his throat, choking him. For all his efforts, Rufus is jealous.</p><p> </p><p>‘How many have there been?’ he thinks that he must be a fool, a naive boy at first, but now he should have seen through the lies.</p><p> </p><p>‘At times my job has required certain indiscretions.’ There have been many, some important, most not.</p><p> </p><p>The glass in Rufus’ hand shatters against the tile in a shower of tiny jagged shards, ‘There’s been you. Only ever you.’ In that moment, Rufus looks so painfully young, that Tseng feels something twist violently inside him as he considers his own infidelity. How if they were younger, before the world had ended, before Midgar had fallen, perhaps given the chance, he might do things differently.</p><p> </p><p>‘I know.’ he replies after quiet consideration, his voice even, betraying nothing, knowing only that Rufus had never given Tseng reason to doubt or to question, too closely guarded or too cold to allow anyone else to have him as Tseng has. </p><p> </p><p>‘They’ve never meant anything, Rufus.’</p><p> </p><p>‘Elena?’</p><p> </p><p>The look Tseng gives him is stricken.</p><p> </p><p>‘If you will allow me to be blunt, Sir, I have already lost you once.’</p><p> </p><p>‘You weren’t the only one to lose someone.’</p><p> </p><p>Tseng closes his eyes, knows where this is going. It’s something they’ve never properly discussed, something that Tseng would rather ignore than acknowledge how far things between them had spiraled out of control. Knows that losing Rufus once had nearly broken him.</p><p> </p><p>‘Before the end, when I thought you were dead. I wanted to die. If I couldn’t save Midgar, I wanted to die with it. You were dead, my city was gone--’ and now. ‘I’m dying. The whole world’s dying again.’</p><p> </p><p>‘You’re not.’</p><p> </p><p>‘Stop it. Look at me, goddammit.’</p><p> </p><p>Tseng does, then. Takes in Rufus’ pale countenance, eyes mapping the trail of blue veins beneath skin made nearly translucent. Geostigma has leached the colour from Rufus’ hair, from his eyes, and for the briefest of moments Tseng thinks he sees pupils flattened into slits, cat-like and glittering, behind long lashes. His hand catches on the edge of a silken sleeve, ‘Rufus.’ The name is a plea.</p><p> </p><p>‘Elena means nothing.’</p><p> </p><p>Rufus sighs with a tiny little shake of his head, light blonde hair tumbling across his face in a careless sweep. 'Don't insult me. You owe me that much.' He does not spare the Turk a single glance when he slides by a moment after having wrenched his arm away from the slack grasp.</p><p> </p><p>And as he returns slip back into bed alone he dares to hope that just this once Tseng will follow him. He waits even after he’s heard the Turk quietly close the door behind him.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>&gt;&gt;----------------------------------&lt;&lt;</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Rufus sits alone, everything neatly filed away, all loose ends tied together. The company's assets left to Reeve. A yearly stipend to be given to the Turks in his service. His personal effects and funds left to Tseng. He leaves instructions, and little else. No need for sentiment, and thinks his legacy shall be simply that he died forgotten, in anonymity after failing to save his city. Not for the first time since the Geostigma began to ravage his body, Rufus wishes that he might have died there in the smouldering ruins of his building. What was a year, perhaps two, worth if he must spend it this way?</p><p> </p><p>He does not pity his state, rather finds it all tiresome. If he must die, he'd rather not stave off the inevitable. In these moments alone, he writes. Small letters to Tseng, poems, all the things that have been left unsaid between them, all written in a careless scrawl. He intends to burn them before the end. Let them be lost to ash and dust like all of his life’s works. A fitting monument to a failed reign.</p><p> </p><p>Tseng finds him there in his office. </p><p> </p><p>‘You shouldn’t be up.’</p><p> </p><p>Rufus can smell the alcohol on him no matter how well Tseng carries himself, knows that he spends most nights with the company of liquor &amp; cigarettes. Knows that his presence, that the state of their shared existence is killing them both.</p><p> </p><p>He looks to Tseng then and tugs his robe more tightly around himself. 'Go. I cannot give you what you want. You have my permission.'</p><p> </p><p>They're sober when it happens, Elena straddling his slim hips, white shirt open revealing the lacy bra beneath. She frees her breasts, nipples a lovely petal pink, pert and perfect. It's been too long since Tseng has found himself with a woman, or the company of anyone for that matter. Rufus in his illness has long denied him.</p><p> </p><p>'You sure?' Elena's mouth finds his ear. She's not here to be the cheat, even as she aches to finally have this.</p><p> </p><p>The condoms are Reno's, who seems to still experience a rather varied and active sex life. He'd tossed Elena a few telling her to not do anyone he wouldn't do.</p><p> </p><p>He slides into her with a muffled sigh. She is not Rufus but in the dim light, he can pretend, though she's all soft curves over toned muscle, petite in a way he's unfamiliar with. </p><p> </p><p>Elena is warm and alive in his arms. He tells himself that it’s not that he doesn’t care for Rufus, rather that he cares too much, deeply, wholly, with such a destructive need that losing him will break Tseng. When he kisses her, she doesn’t taste like death, the subtle tang of mako and wasting decay. And when he buries his lips into the soft golden hair sweeping along her jawline, he wills himself not to think of how Rufus’ has paled, become streaked with strands of silver.</p><p> </p><p>They fuck there in the dark, Elena’s sighs and gasps of pleasure swallowed beneath Tseng’s kisses as he thrusts into the yeilding heat of her pussy. He takes pleasure where he can even as he thinks of Rufus cloistered away down the hall.</p><p> </p><p>When he comes he wishes it were Rufus.</p><p> </p><p>Elena plucks the clove cigarette from his hands, takes a long drag. 'We can't keep doing this.'</p><p> </p><p>She's right, they can't. As much as he needs the release, the casual comfort of her body, the familiarity of a friend. It means nothing, not to her--that school girl crush long since having matured into a mutual agreement.</p><p> </p><p><em> Find a whore, Tseng. </em> His mind berates him because paying for sex is easy, uncomplicated, discreet.</p><p> </p><p>'You're not going to find what you're looking for if you don't talk to him, you know. You were an attentive lover, boss. But it wasn't me you were making love to.'</p><p> </p><p>The door to their shared bedroom is locked. Tseng accepts that it is no more than he deserves even as something constricts in his throat. He presses his hands flat against the door, draws in a steadying breath and pretends like something inside him isn’t fracturing.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>&gt;&gt;----------------------------------&lt;&lt;</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Rufus wakes to the sound of voices. Hushed chanting whispers he’s heard once before, the mumbled alien dialect of mutated clones and the thought of becoming a mindless shell terrifies him far greater than death. Slipping from the bed, he knows Tseng keeps barbiturates stashed away along with his painkillers, and he cannot bear another sleepless night alone.</p><p> </p><p>He’s three steps from the door when a rolling nausea takes him.</p><p> </p><p>He vomits up some dark substance. ‘No … no …’ Resting his head against the cool porcelain and repeating the word again and again frantically denying what he’s already known. It’s another sign of advanced Geostigma. He curls into himself on the bathroom floor, eyes burning with tears of rage, that this is what he has been reduced to.</p><p> </p><p>When the episode passes, he stares at his reflection. The illness has left him gaunt, frail, eyes shadowed. It’s like looking at a spectre.<br/>
<br/>
He thinks to Tseng, how could he expect him to still want <em> this </em>.</p><p> </p><p>The pills promising a dreamless sleep also offer an escape, he rattles the bottle in his hand, and considers. He’ll end up here one way or another, it’s only a matter of time, days, weeks, before this disease will force his hand, and he will choose an easier death. Setting the bottle aside, knowing sleep will not come tonight, he chooses instead to write.</p><p> </p><p>Tseng is silhouetted against the dim lighting of his office, his Turk hunched over his desk, posture rigid, but there is a shake to his shoulders as if he is choking back sobs.</p><p> </p><p>His letters.</p><p> </p><p>‘Those aren’t yours.’</p><p> </p><p>The papers scatter like leaves. When Tseng turns, he looks more angered than guilty. ‘Were you planning on telling me?’</p><p> </p><p>Even now, Rufus possesses an air of insulted arrogance. ‘You’ll forgive me for wishing to die on my own terms.’</p><p> </p><p>‘How am I to help if you refuse to trust me?’</p><p> </p><p>‘I am dying, Tseng.’ He turns away. When he speaks again his voice is tired. ‘You don’t see it. You choose not to see it.’</p><p> </p><p>'We'll fight this. We always have.'</p><p> </p><p>'No. We won't.'</p><p> </p><p>The crack of Tseng’s fist against the desk is like a gunshot, as he doubles over against the desk and sobs. A harsh angry sound. Rufus stands there mute, stunned into silence by this unprecedented force of emotion. He hears Reno, Rude, and Elena moving about from where he suspects they’ve been drowning their own sorrows in beer, commiserating together. But if they are witness to this scene, none of them dare enter.</p><p> </p><p>The sobs cease abruptly, Tseng’s form straightening, until the only sound between them are their breaths, Tseng’s shaky, Rufus’ shallow and rasping.</p><p> </p><p>When it is over, Rufus gathers up the papers, discards them into a metal waste bin, and sets them ablaze.</p><p> </p><p>Tseng does not go to Elena the following night, though he longs for her comfort, her vibrance, and life. He wants to drown in the soft warmth of her body, as he once did with Rufus.</p><p> </p><p>He sits alone in darkness, palming the hardness straining against his trousers, thinking of Rufus pliant and so alive in the mako tinged half light. He misses the taste of his kisses, the way it felt to be buried inside that tight heat, the soft private smiles. He longs for the young man who had the world, to be given a second chance where he might do things differently, where Rufus might not die with so many shared regrets, because the weight of their reality is simply too much to bear. A love that has weakened him, has haunted him, and will assuredly break him. Rufus’ wasting death will ultimately destroy him, for he lost him once before and mourned as if the world itself had ended and all that existed was some hellish place where demons roamed.</p><p> </p><p>He finds no satisfaction in his release, and once more turns to alcohol, the expensive dark liquor swirling in cut crystal, and burning his throat with each sip.</p><p> </p><p>When Rufus emerges in the early hours before dawn, it's like watching a ghost. White silk robe trailing about him, pale skin made even paler still in the dark. The young man stands in the chilly morning air, feet bare against the cold tiles, and breathes in a rasping breath.</p><p> </p><p>A low ache forms in Tseng’s chest with the weight of how much he misses him. 'Come back to me.'</p><p> </p><p>'I can't.'</p><p> </p><p>'Let me help you fight this.' In that moment, Tseng thinks he might break once more, and steels himself. They both know that Rufus is on borrowed time. 'Please don't shut me out.'</p><p> </p><p>‘I can’t give you what you want.’</p><p> </p><p>‘I don’t care, goddammit.’ He's on his knees, hands clutching at the hem of Rufus' robe. ‘I miss us.’ He reaches out to take Rufus’ hand, lips pressed against the spread of Geostigma there, kissing it unafraid.</p><p> </p><p>Rufus kneels before Tseng, tugging gently at the collar of his robe to reveal the creeping dark splotches along his collarbone. ‘How could I let you.’ He flinches when Tseng traces fingertips along them, wishing for the security of his bandages, too exposed and vulnerable without them. ‘I’m a relic, dying like Midgar.’ He thinks perhaps that his life is fated to his city, to burn too brightly and then be left to wasting decay, an ashen ruin forgotten. ‘I didn’t want to leave you with only this.’ </p><p> </p><p>He does not pity himself, only finds it cruel that he has been cheated out of a mythic death. He knows that many would say he is deserving of this affliction, his punishment for the many wrongs committed by his father, and his own inability to save his city. </p><p> </p><p>Tseng leans forward until their brows are pressed together, fingers entwined, and holds him, as the solemn gravity settles around them both.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Fin </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p>
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